Someone is investigating a Sampson earmark

The state agency overseeing one of Brooklyn Sen. John Sampson’s 2009 legislative earmarks is refusing to release documents about it would “interfere with law enforcement investigations or judicial proceedings.”

I wrote last month about nearly $40,000 in taxpayer funds that Sampson steered to Edmon Braithwaite, owner of a Brooklyn radio station, for use in an internship program that apparently never got off the ground. Braithwaite’s One Caribbean Foundation never filed any required paperwork required to accompany the cash; about six months after the grant from the Office of Children and Family Services went through, Sampson became a shareholder in a liquor store Braithwaite opened in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

It seems someone is looking into this, as both these records and the liquor store records have been withheld citing an ongoing investigation. Sampson was indicted earlier this year on unrelated charges that he embezzled from mortgage foreclosure accounts and threatened to “take … out” witnesses against another business associate. He’s pleaded not guilty and remains in office.

Sampson, through a spokesman, has said he has no knowledge of what the One Caribbean Foundation did with the earmark and is no longer a shareholder in the liquor store. Braithwaite has not commented.